Today dawned bright and sunny as forecast, and -12C at base of the lifts… that’ll be cold then. We decided to head over to Val Thorens VT but ‘dropped in to area 43’ to get some air first (I think that is how you say it to sound cool… might need a hashtag in there, not sure).

Even better than sunshine was the distinct lack of wind, so we were able to get up high, and get views like this.

As you can see a distinct lack of crowds at altitude, but the lift were busy lower down.

As today is carnival apparently, struggling to see what that has got to do with pancakes but whatever… There is some deal that if you ski in fancy dress you get a free sledging pass on Thursday evening, or something like that. Anyway, Ruth and I decided to dress up as retro 1990s skiers, by the simple method of wearing our normal gear, but our skiing companions joined a lot of other people by skiing in onesies..

The good news is that the ‘self’ is alive and well in VT although this one has the disadvantage of being at 3000m, there are plenty of others.

We are really getting into this take a picnic idea, and VT has a few places marked on the map. Here is today’s, a cracking location, but it is still about -10C so eating with gloves on. Tried to sort the gopro on my helmet out for the afternoon but my hands were just too cold.

We dropped in (or is that hashtag dropped in, I’m getting confused) for a few runs in the family park, there are some serious jumps near here as well, we saw the helicopter pick up 2 stretchers while were in the area…

Time to head home after the inevitable stop… must be 25 years since we first had one of these.

Trying to cook pancakes this evening (not in onesies) which at least avoids any re run of the embarrassing moment two evenings ago when I mistook the tart aux framboise for a cork mat….